Loyal workers were well rewarded

THE Capper Pass metal refining works were once a major Bedminster employer.

The family business, which started life in the West Midlands, relocated to Bristol in about 1812 and became established in Avon Street, St Philip's.

But after being found guilty of receiving stolen metal the elder Capper Pass was transported to Australia, which is where he stayed and remarried.

Seemingly undeterred by this the rest of the family continued trading in Bristol.

Alfred Capper Pass, the man who took the firm on to greater things, was born in St Philip's in 1837.

By the 1840s the business, which was now processing gold and silver as well as lead and copper ores, relocated to Bedminster's Mill Street, closer to the coal supplies.

By the 1860s Capper Pass were producing tin alloy, or solder.

The family lived in Windmill Hill, near the works, later moving to more upmarket Redland.

In 1870, after his father had died, Alfred took over the business.

He ran it in a typically Victorian, paternal way, with himself as a father figure to his loyal, non- striking, workers.

At Christmas employees got new shirts, and their families presents.

In winter when the Malago stream which ran near the factory, overflowed, he would order sacks of coal to help dry out the workers' sodden homes.

Older employees would receive warm woollen clothing.

Workers' houses were built on Windmill Hill with Alfred also buying land there for the building of a church.

Wages were paid at higher rates than the local iron foundry and even higher than at Fry's cocoa works, noted as a generous firm.

But Capper Pass employees were expected to do their bit.

Bill Parsons, for instance, who lived in Chew Magna, was expected to rise at 3.30am to get to work for 6am.

Meals were taken “on the job” and tea brewed up on the company's red hot furnaces.

Between 1875 and 1882, the size of the works doubled.

Alfred, with ambitions and interests that were solidly Victorian, saw himself as something of an intellectual gentleman, collecting ancient bits and pieces discovered while resmelting lead from the Roman mines on Mendip.

And, after helping a fledgling Bristol University get on its feet, he remained a major benefactor until his death.

In 1905 Alfred died, and from this time on the firm was managed by non-family businessmen.

World War I proved profitable and by the 1920s, utilising new methods of refining high-quality tin, the firm prospered.

But finding space to expand in Bedminster was an ever- present problem.

In 1928 a new factory, near to railways, coal, water and old clay pits (for dumping), was opened near Hull.

By the end of World War II most employees had moved north, and in 1963 the Bristol works ceased production.

But the company name lives on at Bristol University's department of organic chemistry, which has an Alfred Capper Pass professorship.